For the converging holiday, 5 dishes and a drink that will fit on any table and save you and your guests some calories

Spatchcocked Turkey NOT Deep-Fried

Spatchcocked Turkey NOT Deep-Fried

The novelty of deep-fried turkey wears off with your first bite of overcooked breast meat or grease-sogged leg. In terms of precision cooking, there’s no better way to ensure an evenly roasted bird — moist breast meat, juicy leg meat and crisp, browned skin — than spatchcocking. Plus, it’s just a really fun word to say: spatchcock. There’s no heavy lifting required. You simply remove the turkey’s backbone with sturdy kitchen shears, lay it flat on a roasting pan, and let your oven do its thing.

The Food Lab at Serious Eats has a step-by-step spatchcocking tutorial.